“No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength.”

Saturday, February 27, 2016

Cheap Chinese CO2 Lasers

It has been a few days since the new laser arrived.

So far the good...

I used it to make this, a couple laser engravers, and a couple 3D printers.

It is well on its way to paying for itself.

Now the bad.

Unless you have a good amount of electronic skills with CNC machines, you would be better off with a more expensive machine.

The power supply unit burned out after only a few days.

I attempted to get a new one from the Ali Express buyer protection and was met with a torrent of abuse from the Chinese seller. I went back to change my review of his store to documenting his abuse. He basically accused me of abusing the machine etc.

In reality the bridge rectifier was under sized, the fuses were wrong, and it needed a voltage limiter. The MOFEET for the 5v portion was not insulated.

I had already replaced several switches that were very poor. The fan and ducting was replaced.

The coolant hoses still need replacing, and the fused kettle plug on the back was replaced.

After all that was fixed, I put it back to work. It still has varying power output, as evidenced by banding in engraving operations but it is good enough for my cutting operations.

I do plan on buying and re-selling these lasers for the local market, however from a different seller and after they are disassembled, upgraded, aligned, tested and re-assembled.

The eBay price for these is around $500. They still need a couple hundred dollars mods to make them usable if you want to put them to work in a business.